"Yes," said Doris, "I suppose so. I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Austin," she added gratefully. "I am sure," she continued, her pale face lighting up with a smile, "if these picture-dealers were more like you they would be much improved."
"If I was a picture-dealer," said Sam to himself, as he drove off with his empty cab, thinking over this compliment, "I'd buy the whole bloomin' lot of pictures at a price that would ruin me rather than bring tears to the eyes of that blessed little angel. It's horsewhipping, or else shooting, them dealers want, and I'd give it them if I was the Government, I would, as sure as my name is Sam Austin."
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW WORK FOR DORIS.
Have hope, though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn:
Put thou the sadness from thy brow,
No night but hath its morn.
SCHILLER.
That was a dark time with Doris. Long afterwards she looked back upon it as the hour of her deepest humiliation, when the tide of her life was at its lowest ebb, and Giant Despair held out claw-like hands to seize her for his own.
She was unsuccessful: the pictures she had thought so pretty were of no commercial value, her only hope of making a living for herself, not to mention her magnificent project of repaying Bernard Cameron some of the money of which her father had robbed him, was completely destroyed. She had no gift by means of which she could
Breast the blows of circumstance
And grapple with her evil star,
And make by force her merit known.
And she was friendless, except for the Austins, and alone in London; moreover, she was absolutely penniless, nay, worse than that, she was in debt, not having paid for her food and lodging for at least three weeks.
Going upstairs as quickly as possible, in order that she might escape Mrs. Austin's questions and even her sympathy, which just then she could not bear, Doris entered her little room, and, locking the door, flung herself on her knees by her bedside.